Walking Dead vs The Last of Us: Rick would have made the same choice

Since The Last of Us started airing, many comparisons have been made between this series and The Walking Dead.  It is hard NOT to compare the two as they are both set in the apocalypse and do share some similarities, but most can agree they are vastly different. This week’s episode of The Last of Us was the season finale and saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) make a difficult decision, but after thinking about it, I believe Rick (Andrew Lincoln)  would have made the same decision.

This article contains heavy spoilers for The Last of Us episode 9, “Look For The Light”

In the season finale of The Last of Us, Joel and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) finally arrived at their destination of Salt Lake City, Utah, where the Fireflies hospital is located. They don’t receive a warm welcome but rather flash bangs and the butts of rifles. Joel wakes up to be told that Ellie is being prepped for surgery to remove the Cordyceps that have been in her brain since birth. He realizes this is a fatal surgery but is reassured that Ellie had no idea the surgery would cause her death before she is put under.

This doesn’t sit well with Joel, and he goes on a very video-game-ish killing spree through the hospital to rescue Ellie from the operating table. He also kills the only man within the Fireflies organization with the knowledge of creating a vaccine.

Joel did the right thing because there was no guarantee that this doctor could make a vaccine, they didn’t let Ellie make the choice to give up her life and didn’t exhaust all other options of using blood or something to create a vaccine. Perhaps it was a selfish decision, but I fully support it.

The Walking Dead – Rick Grimes would have made the same choice Joel did

Rick Grimes was a man who made many decisions based on emotions. During his storyline in The Walking Dead series, Rick made many choices to ensure the safety of his children. Selfish or not, he would always do what was best for those he loved, and on more than one occasion, gunned people down who got in the way of their safety.

Like Joel, with no guarantee that the giving of one life would save the masses, Rick wouldn’t risk sacrificing his child.

People who played The Last of Us game weren’t surprised by the season finale events, but those of us who never played were. I always assumed they would arrive in Salt Lake and the hospital would have been destroyed or something like that, never did I think that it would come to Ellie losing her life.

It will be exciting to see what happens in the upcoming seasons of The Last of Us, as showrunners have already announced that The Last of Us 2 will take more than one season.

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